Question: Vanessa is 4 times as old as Omar and is also 27 years older than Omar. How old is Vanessa?
Answer: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Vanessa and Omar. Let Vanessa's current age be $v$ and Omar's current age be $o$ $v = 4o$ $v = o + 27$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. One way to solve for $v$ is to solve the second equation for $o$ and substitute that value into the first equation. Solving our second equation for $o$ , we get: $o = v - 27$ . Substituting this into our first equation, we get the equation: $v = 4$ $(v - 27)$ which combines the information about $v$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $v = 4v - 108$ Solving for $v$ , we get: $3 v = 108$ $v = 36$.